Those ‘please wash hands’ signs at petting zoos (left, exactly as shown) are as effective as the ‘Employees must wash hands’ signs – they don’t work. And it’s not enough for petting zoos to simply put up signs and hope bad things won’t happen. Good luck in court.

Lawyers representing 28 victims of last year's E. coli outbreak at Godstone farm in Surrey are preparing to demand "substantial" damages in a group legal action.

Ninety-three people, mostly young children, were infected with E. coli O157 after visiting the farm.

Some are still ill with kidney damage.

Godstone farm says it cannot comment on the legal action until the release of a report into the outbreak due next week.

Two of the victims who are expected to be named in the legal action are twins Aaron and Todd Mock, who are about to celebrate their third birthday.

Both had kidney failure and spent weeks in hospital with E. coli poisoning after visiting Godstone Farm last September. Aaron is still unwell; he has limited kidney function and has to be given liquids through a feeding tube.

Their lawyer, Jill Greenfield, alleges that Godstone Farm was negligent in the way it handled the outbreak of E. coli O157. She is representing 27 children and one adult who were affected.

barfblog.com reader – and now several-time commenter – writes why do the Dirty Thumbers -- the important individuals at work, at the mall, in a restaurant and other public venues – have to type away on their smart phone while pooping. So many times have I heard the clickity clack of a Blackberry scroll ball coming from the stall next to me or better yet the guy at the urinal with the smart phone in one hand and …

There was this one time I was at the urinal and felt my Blackberry vibrate in my pocket.

Of course I looked –after I washed my hands- outside of the restroom, in the hall, and it was an email from a fellow co-worker. A well written and concise message about a project he is working on with me. As I placed my Blackberry back in my pocket I was abruptly greeted by that same coworker exiting the restroom. He was obviously just in the crapper thumbing away. After an awkward glance and me now realizing he was a Dirty Thumber, I walked back to my desk and wondered to myself… “if I ever found this guy laying face down on the street and I didn’t have my phone but his was readily available, could I bring myself to calling 911 on his?.” Al Bundy use to say his best thoughts came to him while sitting on the throne…may be that is true for some people. However, if someone wants to make a smart phone smarter….engineer it out of antimicrobial parts.

 

An Illinois health spokesperson told The Packer today that fresh produce was the likely culprit sickening at least 71 people with Salmonella who ate at Subway restaurants in 22 different counties.

But no one’s really talking. That Spongebob cone of silence is working a lot better for the produce industry that it is for BP.

As of this morning, there were 71 confirmed cases of Salmonella serotype Hvittingfoss affecting people from 2- to 88-years-old.

Melaney Arnold, communications manager for the Illinois Department of Public Health told The Packer 26 people have been hospitalized, and seven were still in the hospital as of today.

Subway restaurants in 22 Illinois counties removed lettuce, green peppers, red onions and tomatoes from restaurants during the period in which people who got sick reported eating at a Subway — May 11 to May 25, according to the department — and replaced them with new product, according to a Subway news release.

On June 12, 1996, Ontario's chief medical officer, Dr. Richard Schabas, issued a public health advisory on the presumed link between consumption of California strawberries and an outbreak of diarrheal illness among some 40 people in the Metro Toronto area. The announcement followed a similar statement from the Department of Health and Human Services in Houston, Texas, who were investigating a cluster of 18 cases of Cyclospora illness among oil executives.

Dr. Schabas advised consumers to wash California berries "very carefully" before eating them, and recommended that people with compromised immune systems avoid them entirely. He also stated that Ontario strawberries, which were just beginning to be harvested, were safe for consumption. Almost immediately, people in Ontario stopped buying strawberries. Two supermarket chains took California berries off their shelves, in response to pressure from consumers. The market collapsed so thoroughly that newspapers reported truck drivers headed for Toronto with loads of berries being directed, by telephone, to other markets.

However, by June 20, 1996, discrepancies began to appear in the link between California strawberries and illness caused by the parasite, Cyclospora, even though the number of reported illnesses continued to increase across North America. Texas health officials strengthened their assertion that California strawberries were the cause of the outbreak, while scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said there were not yet ready to identify a food vehicle for the outbreak. On June 27, 1996, the New York City Health Department became the first in North America to publicly state that raspberries were also suspected in the outbreak of Cyclospora.

By July 18, 1996, the CDC declared that raspberries from Guatemala -- which had been sprayed with pesticides mixed with water that could have been contaminated with human sewage containing Cyclospora -- were the likely source of the Cyclospora outbreak, which ultimately sickened about 1,000 people across North America. Guatemalan health authorities and producers have vigorously refuted the charges. The California Strawberry Commission estimates it lost $15 million to $20 million in reduced strawberry sales.

Cyclospora cayetanensis is a recently characterised coccidian parasite; the first known cases of infection in humans were diagnosed in 1977. Before 1996, only three outbreaks of Cyclospora infection had been reported in the United States. Cyclospora is normally associated with warm, Latin American countries with poor sanitation.

One reason for the large amount of uncertainty in the 1996 Cyclospora outbreak is the lack of effective testing procedures for this organism. To date, Cyclospora oocysts have not been found on any strawberries, raspberries or other fruit, either from North America or Guatemala. That does not mean that cyclospora was absent; it means the tests are unreliable and somewhat meaningless. FDA, CDC and others are developing standardized methods for such testing and are currently evaluating their sensitivity.

The initial, and subsequent, links between Cyclospora and strawberries or raspberries were therefore based on epidemiology, a statistical association between consumption of a particular food and the onset of disease. For example, the Toronto outbreak was first identified because some 35 guests attending a May 11, 1996 wedding reception developed the same severe, intestinal illness, seven to 10 days after the wedding, and subsequently tested positive for cyclospora. Based on interviews with those stricken, health authorities in Toronto and Texas concluded that California strawberries were the most likely source. However, attempts to remember exactly what one ate two weeks earlier is an extremely difficult task; and larger foods, like strawberries, are recalled more frequently than smaller foods, like raspberries. Ontario strawberries were never implicated in the outbreak.

Once epidemiology identifies a probable link, health officials have to decide whether it makes sense to warn the public. In retrospect, the decision seems straightforward, but there are several possibilities that must be weighed at the time. If the Ontario Ministry of Health decided to warn people that eating imported strawberries might be connected to Cyclospora infection, two outcomes were possible: if it turned out that strawberries are implicated, the ministry has made a smart decision, warning people against something that could hurt them; if strawberries were not implicated, then the ministry has made a bad decision with the result that strawberry growers and sellers will lose money and people will stop eating something that is good for them. If the ministry decides not to warn people, another two outcomes are possible: if strawberries were implicated, then the ministry has made a bad decision and people may get a parasitic infection they would have avoided had they been given the information (lawsuits usually follow); if strawberries were definitely not implicated then nothing happens, the industry does not suffer and the ministry does not get in trouble for not telling people. Research is currently being undertaken to develop more rigorous, scientifically-tested guidelines for informing the public of uncertain risks.

But in Sarnia (Ontario, Canada) they got a lot of sick people who attended the Big Sisters of Sarnia-Lambton Chef's Challenge on May 12, 2010.

The health department has completed interviews with over 270 people who attended the event. Of those people interviewed, 193 have reported being ill with symptoms consistent with cyclospora infection. There are currently 40 laboratory confirmed cases.

There’s no food safety here – other than the Stan Mikita Donuts used in the movie Wayne’s World, written by and starring Mike Myers of Toronto (Canada), riffing on Tim Hortons donuts.

With Chicago winning Lord Stanley’s Cup this evening for the first time since 1961, Toronto officially becomes the worst hockey franchise, probably ever. They haven’t won the Cup since 1967, and have gone the longest of the original six hockey teams that have not won the Cup.

But good for Tony Esposito, Chicago Blackhawks goodwill ambassador and best NHL goalie ever.

For some reason, foodborne illness outbreaks involving raw milk, or organic or some other small food category require exaggerated level of proof to be believed. Epidemiology doesn’t seem to count, neither does knowledge of microbiology.

There’s at least five people sick with E. coli O157:H7 linked to consuming raw milk from the Hartmann Dairy Farm in southern Minnesota.

Yesterday, the farm released a statement saying,

"As of today, there is no evidence of any harmful bacteria in any raw milk, cheese, meat or other product sampled from the Hartmann Farm. The State has engaged in a serious regulatory and potentially criminal action in a grossly negligent manner with total disregard for the defamatory content of their media campaign."

OK, Bart (below, left, exactly as shown).

Today, the Minnesota Department of Health answered some questions:

What evidence do you have that raw milk from the Hartmann farm caused the illnesses?

This investigation began like many other foodborne investigations: Someone becomes ill, sees their physician and the physician sends a stool specimen to a clinical laboratory. If that laboratory finds, or “isolates”, one of a number of illness-causing bacteria (eg., Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7), they send that bacterial isolate to the MDH Public Health Laboratory (PHL) for further testing. Each bacterial isolate is DNA fingerprinted by a technique called pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE).

During May 2010, E. coli O157:H7 isolates from 5 patients sent by separate clinical laboratories to the MDH PHL were found to all have the same DNA fingerprint by PFGE testing.

This particular DNA fingerprint type (which also can be called a “strain”) of E. coli O157:H7 had never been seen before in Minnesota. The fact that multiple patients all were infected with this new strain in such a tight timeframe indicates that there was a common source for the illnesses. In other words, the patients must have acquired their infection from the same source.

In any foodborne illness investigation, MDH epidemiologists interview patients about an extensive array of possible exposures. These interviewers use a standard questionnaire and interview technique. This includes asking questions about what the ill people ate, including meat, produce and other food items. It also includes questions about recreational water and drinking water, contact with animals, daycare attendance, and more.

In this outbreak, the ill people came from communities across Minnesota, and the only exposure the cases had in common was consumption of raw dairy products from the Hartmann farm. This connection, and the fact that the same strain of E. coli O157:H7 found in the ill people was found in several animals and from several environmental samples on the Hartmann farm, clearly indicates that the farm was the source of the E. coli O157:H7 that made the people ill.

What is the significance of finding E. coli O157 in the environmental samples from the farm?

The strain found on the farm matches the strain found in the cases of illness. Again, this is a strain that has never been seen before in Minnesota.
This tells us that the bacteria that sickened the people was on the Hartmann farm and since several of the people that became ill never visited the farm, their only potential source would have been food products from the farm.

Did you find the outbreak strain in dairy product from the cases’ homes or from the farm?

The outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7 has not been found in product yet. However, product samples that were collected from the farm were obtained one week to several weeks after production of products that made people sick. Other strains of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli were found, indicating an ongoing problem with contamination.

The fact that the outbreak strain was not found in samples of product taken from the farm or homes does not mean it wasn’t in the product that sickened the individuals. In many cases, only particular batches of product may have been contaminated. The product from the contaminated batches may not be available for testing because it has already been consumed. Even if the contaminated batches are available for testing, the contamination may not be uniformly distributed throughout the product. It can be difficult to find the “needle in the haystack” when only small amounts of product are able to be used for a laboratory test. The fact that some pathogen was not found in a sample taken today does not mean it wasn’t there yesterday or a week ago, or won’t be there tomorrow. Also, since raw milk contains many types of bacteria it is a difficult process to isolate individual bacteria growths and find the disease-causing strains.

The outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7 was found in the manure of some individual calves, sheep, and cattle pens. Of note, the calves were likely drinking the same milk as that consumed by the cases.

Standard public health practice does not require finding the illness strain of pathogen in either environmental or product samples in order to determine the source of an outbreak and before intervention to prevent further illness should be initiated. In fact, it is quite rare in foodborne investigations that food product is available for testing as it is often perishable or has been completely consumed by the time the outbreak is recognized. State health and agriculture officials often act on epidemiologic evidence to remove contaminated products from the marketplace and prevent additional illnesses. Indeed, to do nothing in the face of such compelling evidence would be irresponsible – regardless of the size or nature of operation implicated.

Are there more cases being investigated?

Yes, MDH has received additional reports of illness in several consumers of Hartmann dairy products that it is investigating.

The Brits like to call their restaurant inspection disclosure system ‘scores on doors’ but consumers in Wales are unanimously disappointed and probably a little baffled that results won’t actually have to be posted.

But let a spokeswoman from the U.K. Food Standards Agency explain:

“The scheme is neither intended to punish non-compliance nor be an additional enforcement tool for local authorities. There are other, more appropriate, enforcement options available.

“We believe that as awareness of the national scheme grows, consumers will make their own judgments about a business failing to display its score and that this will encourage businesses to display them.”

Abby Alford of WalesOnline reports that FSA maintains “the display of scores had been opposed by industry, would be an unwelcome delay in introducing the scheme and was not in line with the principle of better regulation.”

Huh?

Kansas State University came out with their version of the Chapman and me and other Blue Rodeo groupies study this morning.

Posting graphical, concise food safety information sheets in the kitchens of restaurants can help reduce dangerous food safety practices and create a workplace culture that values safe food, according to a new paper co-authored by Kansas State University's Doug Powell.

The study, "Assessment of food safety practices of food service food handlers: testing a communication intervention," was published in the June issue of the Journal of Food Protection. It was authored by Ben Chapman, assistant professor of food safety at the North Carolina State University; Powell, associate professor of food safety at K-State; Katie Filion, master's student in biomedical science at K-State; and Tiffany Eversley and Tanya MacLaurin of the University of Guelph in Canada.

It's the first time that a communication intervention using food safety info sheets has been validated to work, Powell said.

Powell and Chapman came up with the idea for food safety info sheets to promote discussion and improve food safety behaviors while playing hockey at the University of Guelph in 2003. Chapman was a graduate student at the time.

"Chapman and I played hockey a lot, and there was a bar and restaurant that overlooked the one ice surface where we often had after-hockey food safety meetings with our industry, provincial and federal government colleagues," Powell said. "We had all this food safety information, and the manager of the restaurant was into food safety, so we thought that if daily sports pages are posted on the walls and doors of washroom stalls, why not post engaging food safety information in kitchens for restaurant employees to read."

As part of his doctoral research, Chapman partnered with a food service company in Canada and placed small video cameras in unobtrusive spots around eight food-service kitchens that volunteered to participate in the study. There were as many as eight cameras in each kitchen, which recorded directly to computer files that were reviewed by Chapman and others.

The work built on other direct food safety observational studies conducted at K-State and published in the British Food Journal in 2009.

Food safety info sheets, highlighting the importance of hand washing or preventing cross-contamination, for example, were then introduced into the kitchens, and video was again collected. The researchers found that cross-contamination events decreased by 20 percent, and hand-washing attempts increased by 7 percent.

The increases show the information sheets work, Powell said. "Food safety messages like 'Employees must wash hands' signs in bathrooms just don't work," he said.

Since September 2006 more than 150 food safety info sheets have been produced and are available for anyone to use, http://www.foodsafetyinfosheets.com. The website has a search function and offers automatic email alerts and RSS feeds.

K-State's Filion coded much of the video as an undergraduate student researcher in Canada. MacLaurin, who collaborated on the research, was born on a farm/ranch in Kansas and received all her degrees from K-State before joining the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at the University of Guelph in 1991, where she subsequently collaborated with Powell.

The paper and study abstract are available at:


http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2010/00000073/00000006/art00013
 

It's just too weird but somewhat compelling and has to be included on a blog called, barfblog.

Weightlifter Logan Lacy loses his lunch during this June 8, 2010 attempt. He'll probably blame it on foodborne illness.